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Chapters (64)
  1. Book Description
  2. About Kennedy Ryan
  3. Also from Kennedy Ryan
  4. Acknowledgments from the Author
  5. Book Description
  6. Dedication
  7. Prologue
  8. Part One
  9. Chapter One
  10. Chapter Two
  11. Chapter Three
  12. Chapter Four
  13. Chapter Five
  14. Chapter Six
  15. Chapter Seven
  16. Part Two
  17. Chapter Eight
  18. Chapter Nine
  19. Chapter Ten
  20. Chapter Eleven
  21. Chapter Twelve
  22. Chapter Thirteen
  23. Chapter Fourteen
  24. Chapter Fifteen
  25. Chapter Sixteen
  26. Chapter Seventeen
  27. Chapter Eighteen
  28. Chapter Nineteen
  29. Chapter Twenty
  30. Chapter Twenty-One
  31. Chapter Twenty-Two
  32. Chapter Twenty-Three
  33. Chapter Twenty-Four
  34. Chapter Twenty-Five
  35. Chapter Twenty-Six
  36. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  37. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  38. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  39. Chapter Thirty
  40. Chapter Thirty-One
  41. Chapter Thirty-Two
  42. Chapter Thirty-Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Chapter Forty-Two
  52. Chapter Forty-Three
  53. Chapter Forty-Four
  54. Chapter Forty-Five
  55. Chapter Forty-Six
  56. Chapter Forty-Seven
  57. Chapter Forty-Eight
  58. Chapter Forty-Nine
  59. Epilogue
  60. Author’s Note
  61. An excerpt from The Kingmaker by Kennedy Ryan
  62. Discover 1001 Dark Nights Collection Seven
  63. Discover the World of 1001 Dark Nights
  64. Special Thanks

A memory takes shape. Me dancing with Jeremy, and Ezra swaying awkwardly with Hannah, our eyes meeting over their shoulders. Boyz II Men singing “I’ll Make Love to You” before we even knew what it meant to make love. We had no idea our first kiss was right around the corner and down the hall. No idea it’d be with each other. Breathless innocence. The first taste of passion. My heart pounding through my training bra, and Ezra’s hands so strangely certain even at that age of how to touch me. Not in bases, first or second or third, but in stages. Exploring, easing, caring.

“Girl, he hates dancing,” Mona says, grabbing my hand and pulling me toward the door. “You know that.”

I shoot one last look over my shoulder as we’re heading out back, and he’s watching me again. I don’t have to wonder if he’s remembering that night, that dance, that kiss.

That ending.

I know he is.

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

Ezra

I’ve always had two left feet.

My father tried teaching me to dance. He used to say my mother’s genes took all my rhythm in the womb. I used to think black people just knew how to dance. It was something I missed out on. A stray piece of my puzzle I never found.

My parents were shocked when I decided after high school in Italy that I wanted to attend Howard University. My mother didn’t know how to ask it, but she didn’t have to. The but why was all over her face. I’d received acceptance letters from Cornell, UCLA, and Columbia, my father’s alma mater. I didn’t even have a scholarship to Howard, but I chose it; I wanted to immerse myself into the unique experience I could only have at an HBCU. I needed to explore that aspect of myself, that black part of myself, in a place where it was affirmed.

I’ve never regretted it. It solidified so many things about who I am. All the parts of who I am. My senior year, I did my student teaching in some of D.C.’s toughest schools and saw how the system had failed a lot of those kids. Saw how hamstrung many educators were by the very system that charged them to teach. That was when the vision for YLA first took root.

The kids at YLA love to dance, most of them executing the latest moves with an ease my body has never managed. Noah’s still too young for YLA, but he’s around a lot, and as soon as they turn on the music and start dancing spontaneously in the gym, the cafeteria, the courtyard, he’s up and moving.